Ways to Connect

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Confidential Superfund settlement negotiations to clean up a century's worth of mining waste in Butte need to be opened to the public because residents have lost faith that the U.S. government will protect their interests, an attorney for a Montana newspaper said Tuesday.

Last week a senior advisor to President-elect Trump said funding for NASA Earth sciences work should be cut dramatically, or just ended. Former Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Walker made those comments in the Guardian newspaper . For perspective on what that would mean, Amy Martin talked to the chairman of the Earth Science Subcommittee for NASA’s Advisory Council. The chairman is Steve Running, who is a regent’s professor of ecology at the University of Montana. She asked Running if big cuts to NASA Earth sciences have been proposed in the past.

The day after the election, Jen Stebbins-Han's kids came home from school and posed a question that before this year, she says, she might have laughed off. "My kids came home and asked us if their dad was going to be deported," she says. "I don't know where they heard that because it wasn't from us." Stebbins-Han's husband is Korean-American. Jen is white. The couple has three young biracial kids. "There is a part of me that's afraid because I don't know what somebody's going to do because...

The Helena - Lewis and Clark National Forest has released its proposed new Forest Plan . The Plan is years in the making, and a four month public comment period on it will open once notice is officially published in the Federal Register, which is expected later this week.

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — An attorney for a Montana newspaper and an advocacy group will try to persuade a federal judge to strike down a 14-year-old court order that made settlement talks on how to clean up the nation's largest Superfund site confidential.

The federal government released rules today designed to help states improve schools and narrow achievement gaps. The ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ provides states a broad framework to support troubled public schools and struggling students. The first draft of Montana’s plan to comply with the new federal law was released earlier this month.

On a cold Sunday morning, a team of citizen scientists are working to restore Lolo Creek southwest of Missoula. The citizen scientist group (AKA Stream Team) is organized by Missoula’s Watershed Education Network (WEN), which has a mission to study, preserve, and educate.

It’s Thanksgiving Day, and in a few hours an army of Santas in shopping malls and department stores will start asking children what they want for Christmas. That tradition bothers Sarah Linden, a Helena photographer and mother of two. She wanted something better for her children.

Sarah Linden : A few years ago, around Christmas time, my kiddos were being kids and I started noticing a trend of What do I get next? What’s for me? I want more of this. I want more of this. And I just finally realized that there had to be something better that we could be doing. And so Santa Clause wrote a letter to my kids inviting them to be a part of the North Pole Ninja team.

The federal government this week rejected Montana’s request to further delay implementation of the Real ID Act . Montana Attorney General Tim Fox once said the Real ID act threatened to create an Orwellian national ID system.